$800 million. That’s the supposed face-saving number that Warner Bros. needs "Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice" to earn to justify the massive expenditure they made on the superhero showdown (its budget is heavily rumored to be way higher than what’s been officially released). And after a record breaking opening weekend, executives will likely be concerned looking at the stats for weekend two.
Firstly, here’s the hard numbers: "Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice" earned $52 million at home this weekend, in addition to another $85 million internationally. The total global haul is now $681 million, which puts it ahead of the worldwide totals for "Man Of Steel," "Captain America: The First Avenger," "Iron Man," "Iron Man 2," and "Thor." The total $261 million domestic is the eleventh highest figure after ten days for any movie ever, and the film had the ninth best stateside weekend for a comic movie book as well. No doubt, that’s great stuff. However, looking a bit closer, there is a definite downward trend. In particular domestically, which could impact the blockbuster’s ability to reach the $1 billion mark; widely seen as the figure WB needs to hit to call ‘Batman v Superman’ a success, if not just merely profitable.
Domestically, the film saw an pretty massive audience drop of -68.4%. Interestingly, that is the same drop Zack Snyder‘s equally critically savaged "Sucker Punch" saw in its second weekend, and it had roughly the same Rotten Tomatoes score as ‘Dawn Of Justice’ (24% vs. 29% for ‘BvS’). And it’s the highest second week drop for any Batman or Superman film ever. Given that WB has already taken the rare move of announcing the home video release date for ‘Batman v Superman’ for mid-July following the opening weekend, one could argue their own internal number crunching is showing the movie will not have a lengthy run. Thus, they are choosing to strike the home video release iron as quickly as possible where they can hopefully earn a few more bucks from the extended, R-rated cut.
And while internationally the movie is holding up pretty well, in China, the film’s biggest grossing overseas market at the moment, ‘Batman v Superman’ took an -85% dive in ticket sales on Friday, compared to opening day a week ago. And it has slipped from first to fourth place at the box office in the country. For the movie to hit the magic $1 billion mark, it needs to hold steady abroad, and right now, that’s looking a bit questionable as the foreign box-office second week drop was also a stiff -66.8%.
All of these numbers are worth viewing in the context that ‘Batman v Superman’ faced no major competition this weekend. The rest of Hollywood didn’t schedule any big openings, likely choosing to stay out of the way of what they perceived would be a juggernaut. However, one wonders how much bigger of a hit the superhero movie would’ve faced had another major film gone wide this weekend.
Also opening this weekend was "God’s Not Dead 2." The faith-based crowd was not moved by the sequel, with the picture earning $8 million, less than its predecessor despite playing on double the number of screens. Meanwhile, comedy "Meet The Blacks" did $4 million on just over 1,000 screens.
"Eye In The Sky" added over 900 screens and landed in the top ten with $4 million, while Richard Linklater‘s "Everybody Wants Some!!" opened in limited release to $323,000 across nineteen screens, for a PSA of $17,000.
1. “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice” — $52.3 million ($261.4 mil.)
2. “Zootopia” — $20 million ($275.9 mil.)
3. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” — $11.1 million ($36.4 mil.)
4. “God’s Not Dead 2” — $8.1 million
5. “Miracles From Heaven” — $7.5 million ($46.8 mil.)
6. “The Divergent Series: Allegiant” — $5.7 million ($56.3 mil.)
7. “10 Cloverfield Lane” — $4.7 million ($63.5 mil.)
8. “Meet The Blacks” — $4.08 million
9. “Eye In The Sky” — $4.05 million ($6.1 mil.)
10. “Deadpool” — $3.5 million ($355 mil.)
For some comparison, the lead up to the release of Trank\’s Fantastic Four was met with some semblance of optimism despite the "fan" contingent insisting that the film would bomb heavily due to a number of things. After the reality sank in, there wasn\’t near-constant coverage of how massive a turd that film was as if to act as a big flip of the bird to fans. There was an article like this, and less than a handful after that essentially touched on the fact that Fox\’s ambitions for a sequel to the thing were basically in the sewer once the film rolled like a tumbleweed out of theaters. BvS, on the other hand, has been trotted out consistently in order to remind everyone (fan or not) of just how bad the film is. The thing is, every fan or non-fan is aware at this point. The only people arguing hard against it are those that will be struck with the same urge to remove the film from memory if a better DC film comes along to replace it, similar to how so many people liked to play selective memory toward the Star Wars prequels when The Force Awakens dropped. Until then, it\’s like being caught in-between two people who like to chatter constantly at you going "Hey, remember how bad thing x sucked?" and "So, you haven\’t forgotten how much thing x was terrible, have you?"
This analysis is spot on. I don\’t see how this is biased at all. BvS was billed as another tent pole blockbuster film and it\’s not doing what prognosticators thought it was going to do. It had a huge opening weekend and it\’s already quickly dying off. There\’s nothing biased about that.
Are you okay, Bob? You seem a little angry.
…anyone who can\’t see that comparing the 5 month sales of a film against 1 week sales is ridiculous and a bit pathetic is a moron of the lowest order. Good day to you morons.
Movie was garbage! Glad it\’s dropping hard.
You\’re missing the point, it\’s an awful movie and the reporting of it is only fair for something that thinks it\’s as weighty as Oscar movies or Nolan movies. It\’s fiar game when it\’s got large box office numbers. Quit your whining.
Sounds to me like word-of-mouth is killing it. People rushed to see it in the first week because they had no idea whether or not it would suck. But now that people of seen it, and are telling their friends, their friends are taking the advice and staying home.
For those of you whining about The Playlist\’s "biased" reporting, it is worth noting that Boxoffice and other outlets have had almost exactly the same analysis. Yes, the film is making a lot of money, but the larger-than-expected drop is nothing to sneeze at as far as WB\’s number-crunching is concerned. This is true regardless of what you thought of the movie itself.
This is a pretty straightforward list of figures, funny how the only people who don\’t think fans deserved a better batman/superman movie are the fans.
C – I\’ve started to look at this as the ostentatious end zone celebrations for (some) of the Playlist writers.
I wasn\’t a big fan of BvS, but the Playlist\’s continued biased reporting is growing tiresome, even for someone who leans in that direction of thinking. I\’ve always been a big fan of this site, but lately it\’s veering more and more into angry/preachy territory. Not fun for a reader – even one who agrees with your message.
I\’m guessing 1B is off the table now, even if it has a more modest drop next weekend. In a way, maybe this is the best scenario for the studio and the comic book fans (I\’m not one, tbh): It\’s big enough for WB to justify going forward with their plans, but not massive enough where they can continue to ignore complaints and not retool things (see: Suicide Squad reshoot rumors). Everyone keeps their jobs, and maybe better movies comes out? or maybe I\’m just being too optimistic.
Really? you are comparing one week of ticket sales for B v S against 22 weekend runs for the Marvel/Disney films?? and this is your reporting style?? You must be really desperate to get the limited premier tickets to the next Disney blockbuster.